I never stopped wearing a mask. I’ve been fully vaccinated since late May. I was avoiding all stores like, well, the plague, and mostly using curbside pickup. After being vaxxed, I stopped most of the curbside pickup. I missed actually going inside stores and shopping. It was mandatory to wear a mask inside still. And then, the CDC fucked the pooch big time and decided to prematurely waive mask mandates for the vaccinated. They were going by the data, and completely ignored the psychology. Really? You want the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers to abide by an honor system? These are the same people whom overwhelmingly voted for one of the most despicable human beings on the planet. And they decided to drop the mask mandate back in late May. The vast majority of people had just become eligible for the vaccine. And it still wasn’t the easiest thing to get depending on yoru location. Way to go CDC. Once you tell people they can stop wearing a mask, best of luck telling them to put it back on.
So I never stopped wearing a mask inside. Yes, I’m vaxxed, and I think wearing a mask for a little extra protection for not just myself, but everyone around me is the easiest goddamn thing anybody can do. Yeah, they’re a bit annoying in the summer. It’s a small price to pay to a return to some kind of normalcy. But any store I’ve been inside, I’m virtually the only person still wearing a mask. Everybody just decided, “meh, we’re done.” Meanwhile, one only had to look over to the UK, a place which has a much higher vaccination rate than the US, to see that the Delta variant was running rampant. The CDC knew this. They decided to just yield to the pro-Covid crowd.
Katherine Wu from the Atlantic has a good article about why she is deciding to mask back up:
I’ve been fully vaccinated for two months. I spent the end of spring weaning myself off of masking indoors, and exchanging, for the first time, visible smiles with neighbors in the lobby of our apartment building. I dined, for the first time in a year and a half, at a restaurant. I attended my first party at another (vaccinated) person’s home since the spring of 2020. I am, after all, now at very low risk of getting seriously sick should SARS-CoV-2 infect me, thanks to Pfizer’s vaccine.
But the pandemic is once again entering a new phase that feels more dangerous and more in flux, even for the people lucky enough to have received their lifesaving shots. A more transmissible variant—one that can discombobulate vaccine-trained antibodies—has flooded the world. It’s wreaking havoc among the uninoculated, a group that still includes almost half of Americans and most of the global population. After a prolonged lull, the pandemic’s outlook is grimmer than it’s been in months. I am, for the foreseeable future, back to wearing masks in indoor public places, and there are four big reasons why.
A restaurant in California is requiring proof of NON-vaccination before allowing people entry:
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (KABC) — The owner of Basilico’s Pasta e Vino spoke out against a backlash on Monday, after posting flyers outside his business and on social media requiring proof that customers are not vaccinated.
The flyers read: “Notice: Proof of being unvaccinated required. We have zero tolerance for treasonous, anti-American stupidity. Thank you for pondering.”
A man set his house on fire because his family didn’t follow the bible:
EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – A 40-year-old man arrested for allegedly setting a West Side home on fire is charged with capital murder after his brother was killed in the incident.
The El Paso Police Department says Philip Daniel Mills set fire to a residence located at 6001 Fandango Place on Thursday at 11:30 p.m. He was arrested after police suspected him of causing the blaze.
An affidavit written by an EPPD detective says Mills allegedly admitted to setting the house on fire. And, in a recorded statement, claimed to have used gasoline from a weed eater to fuel the fire.
Zooming out from extreme closeups of objects is quite relaxing:
I’m not much of an Olympics person. In order for me to watch any of it they would have to put in a terminatoresque robot that shoots three point basketball shots. OH, how convenient:
And more about the making of the robot:
Somebody recreated the Île de la Cité in Minecraft in 1:1 scale:
Great Art Explained is a wonderful YouTube channel. Here’s one on Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks:
Engineering a domino robot. This is pretty intense: